In last week’s Feature Article I talked about two “Energy Leaks” you must stop up if you are going to move toward the business and professional life and outcomes you desire—Preserving Your Time and Energy.  In this week’s article I’m going to give you two more essential changes and leadership skills you MUST implement – two more energy leaks at work so you have more time and energy to move toward the business and professional life and outcomes you desire.

These are ESSENTIAL CHANGES to make or Leadership Skills you need to develop if you are going to make big picture business changes in your life in the coming months.

Okay, moving right along…the next key essential you need to conserve is… (Drum roll please!)

Leadership Skill #3

In order to make the changes…it is essential that you:

Preserve Your Creativity

Good leaders use their creative ideas wisely. It’s a top leadership skill to know when and how to share a creative idea or solution.

I suspect that you have a deep-seated creativity that you simply take for granted. You may even be saying, no Jan that’s not me…….but if we did a life review (which I encourage you to do by the way) you’d probably list many ways in which you applied your creativity – again to helping others achieve their goals. This is not a good leadership skill.

As you become an excellent leader in your life and business, with strong leadership skill—and as you figure out what you really want to aim for in your professional life—right now you need to preserve some of that creativity for yourself.

By observing your creative capacity you will be reminded not only of what you want to do but what you love and are good at doing.

Let me tell you something—when you unconsciously and freely give away your ideas and solutions it’s a form of energy dumping—no one’s asked for it, you give it anyway, auto-pilot—it expels your “tension.”

Right now to make changes – you need to hang onto your tension, work with it, and learn from it. Creative tension gives insights into what you want and what you love, what you are passionate about.

Your Leadership Skill Challenge for this week is “Muscle-building”: I want you to practice preserving your creative tension. You’ll create greater “capacity” for your brilliance work. Preserve it. Later you’ll use it in the right places and have a much bigger impact.

Your Leadership Skill Assignment: Instead of helping others when not asked or doing projects that are unnecessary but familiar, pour that tension into an idea notebook. Have a big picture dream section.

Also on a daily basis make yourself a specific to-do list each day with only 2-3 basic and necessary tasks you must do.

Build in new vision-building time and Stay focused on you.

Leadership Skill #4

To make the changes you want… the 4th key essential is to:

Conserve Your Expertise (and Maybe Even Money!)

Many of you don’t value or even think about the value of your expertise. Top leaders do. It’s a highly valued leadership skill to own your expertise and use it at appropriate times.

You’re probably like my clients many of whom give it away, they are not compensated for it; thus others don’t value you, they take you for granted, you end up resentful.

Many of those in management or director level positions make huge amounts of money for others and are not rewarded themselves. Some even practically run companies without being brought on as partners. They are greatly undervalued.

Your Leadership Skill Challenge is to not give away all your “Goodies!”: Again, your challenge is to do what is required—while you figure out what you really want to do—but to not give away all your goodies!

I know the secondary challenge is to not feel guilty or selfish while holding back. That’s a whole other topic and I have a number of articles on my blog to help you with those emotions that are learned, not real emotions. Take a look at http://BigPictureConnections.com

Your Leadership Skill Assignment: Do a life review. Write down all the ways you have freely helped others and note the cost benefit to them (it may be a person or a company) and the cost drain or loss to you (how were you compensated or taken for granted?)

Let’s be clear: Your expertise is valuable and can make you financially profitable if you put yourself first to figure out your new direction. From that place of clarity you will be a wise, strong leader with solid leadership skills.

If you have any questions about customizing a Career Coaching block of time for yourself, please go to this page http://bigpictureconnections.com/big-picture-partnering-in-business-coaching/ where you’ll send me a short form indicating your vision and needs. Then we’ll talk and set up a time just for you!

Also, to learn more about the year-long Individual Coaching, Mentoring & Group Masterminding opportunity, check out THE DEEP DIVE.